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Quick answers
What is Filipino cuisine?
Filipino cuisine is sour more than chili-hot: adobo in vinegar and soy, sinigang in tamarind. Chinese noodles, Spanish fiesta roasts and American sweet-sauces sit on an Austronesian rice-and-bagoong base.
Is it always spicy?
Filipino cuisine sits at spice 52 in this atlas. Adobo and Sinigang show the range better than a single heat number.
What should a first meal include?
Adobo plus one regional plate — not only the export icon.
What is Adobo?
Vinegar-garlic stew method, many meats.
How do people eat at home?
A fiesta is lechon and a table that does not run out. A Tuesday is rice, a sour soup and leftover adobo that tastes better on day two.
What travels poorly?
The home pantry around Adobo and the labour behind Sinigang rarely fit a takeaway box.
Filipino cuisine changes by valley, coast and capital. Pampanga is one node, not the whole map.
The meters treat heat, ferment, street density and sharing as the axes that actually organise meals.
Systems
Luzon / Manila
The media pantry: adobo, sinigang, fast food.
Pampanga
Fiesta craft and sisig.
Ilocos
Bagoong, vegetables, salt.
Bicol
Chili-coconut.
Visayas
Lechon arguments and seafood.
Mindanao
Muslim-Filipino and southern tables.
Flavour meters
Cities & regions
Pampanga
Fiesta kitchens.
La Paz, Iloilo
Batchoy and Visayan soup craft.
Cebu lechon streets
The roast-pig argument.
Binondo, Manila
Chinese-Filipino oldest Chinatown.
LA / Daly City
US Filipino grocery and kamayan rooms.
Materials
Vinegar (suka)
Coconut and cane vinegars as the sour bass.
Bagoong
Fish/shrimp paste.
Garlic and bay
The adobo pair.
Rice
The meal.
Regional pride in this cuisine is argued through Adobo and Sinigang more than through a single official recipe.
Keep exploring
More in South & Southeast Asia
Indian cuisine
Tadka, dal and a subcontinental map: masala, rice, breads and heat that is not one curry.
Overall 76 🥥Indonesian cuisine
Islands of sambal and coconut: rendang, nasi goreng and a spice-trade pantry across 17,000 islands.
Overall 68 🍜Malaysian cuisine
Malay, Chinese and Indian tables under one roof: nasi lemak, laksa and the mamak shop.
Overall 70